


The Sky Walkers

by Virodeil



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, childfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6422107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Virodeil/pseuds/Virodeil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bail Organa confessed. And from that moment on, everything changed.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>(Beta-read by Malicean)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uprooted

**Author's Note:**

> 1. This story is almost totally AU; too much has changed with just one thing. Plus, there are also facts and character relationships that I tweak for various purposes and reasons. And please remember, this is only my third attempt at an SW story, _ever_ , while I still know so little of it.  
> 2. Thank you very much for Malicean for beta-reading this story. But all mistakes that you see here are my own, not hers.  
> 3. This story may not agree with many things written on Wookieepedia, partly because it’s AU. It also may not agree with those who love EU, deep twisted angst, awesome ending for the Emperor, totally-evil Vader, evil Lars, totally-good Jedi, totally-good rebellion, totally-bad Imperials, steamy romance, street language, awesome barfights and battles, and a few sundry other things. I simply don’t write heavy twisted angst, heavy action-adventure, heavy romance, or pure EU, or little facts that might or might not be true to canon. Please read with consideration.  
> 4. Further warnings: major character death in the first chapter, maybe one or two or three more much later on, and touchy, controversial themes like slavery, empire vs republic, right and wrong, Jedi and Sith and the one in between, mind rape, and a few other things in the rest of the story. I felt it would be prudent too to warn readers _again_ that this author knows only a puny amount of Star Wars, despite the patient help of her patient beta-reader…  
>  5. Critiques, ideas, flames, comments: All are welcome; ideas, especially, as this is a rather loose story once we get nearer to the middle, and the owner(s) of those ideas will certainly get a mention here, or even more. I’m relying on you all to rant and rave at me for the bumps. And again, all mistakes are mine, not my beta-reader’s! So, here we go…

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bail Organa wished to pass on with clear conscience.

The royal bedchamber smelled of illness.

 

It was nothing new to Leia Organa, ever since somebody had slipped a poison into her father’s wine in the evening three days ago, to which a part of her had shrieked at her in warning but too late. It was sheer luck that had saved her from the same fate; or rather, it had been her father’s unshakable rule about never allowing her alcohol before the age of fifteen that had spared her life in that rare private dinner of father and daughter.

 

Ever since that fateful evening, she had rarely left her father’s bedside.

 

But since yesterday evening, she had been finding it hard to look upon her father.

 

Because the best doctors, discreetly drawn from all over Alderaan and even off the system altogether, had at last proclaimed her father as a lost cause yesterday evening.

 

The poison was a rare type from one of the outer-rim worlds, they had said. The poison had no known antidote and concocting one was impossible within the timeframe, they had said. Her father only had a further twenty-four hours to live, they had said.

 

Leia could only stand silently before them for a long time.

 

And then she had fled right to her rooms, to her bed, locking the door behind her and ordering Threepio, her friend and personal protocol droid, to prop her writing desk up against it to boot.

 

That night, her pillow had been soaked with bitter tears. That night, she had kept vigil alone in her own rooms, too terrified to face her father, to face the truth. And in the end of that night, she had fallen into the same nightmare that had often plagued her in her early childhood, and even sometimes afterwards, one that she could never properly describe to anybody, nor ignore entirely.

 

There had been four presences: two stronger and two weaker, interlinked in a most intimate manner, always, in that dream that she was never sure wasn’t a memory. One stronger presence turned muddy, withdrawn but never gone, forsaken and then forsaking, but the others…

 

She and one other had been with the other stronger presence for the longest while, always interlocked, even through the near-separation with the now-muddy one. But then the link to the now-muddy one was yanked and severed, quickly followed by the other stronger presence, and the other.

 

Four had howled in agony.

 

And then she was alone, terrifyingly alone, while there had been three others with her, _always_ three, however faint, however muddy.

 

And now, she was going to be left alone _again_ , undeniably for real this time, as her mother had passed away while she had only been three years old, as she had never been close to her other relatives, and as Winter, her best friend, had been more inclined, more comfortable to serving her as a secretary or a maid or a friend than a sister.

 

But she could not avoid it, fight against it, just like she had never managed to keep all the links that had sustained her existence in all repetitions of the nightmare, just like she had never managed to fully suppressed any reoccurrences of the said nightmare, nor the part of her it had originated from.

 

She could not avoid seeing her father for the last time too, and partly she indeed did not wish so.

 

Bail Organa had been a robust man, quick with a sunny smile, more apt to frowning in thought than anger. Bail Organa had been a great charismatic leader, quite a doting father, a strong person with hopes for a better future for the galaxy.

 

But now, Bail Organa was only a thin frail man laid near the edge of a too-large bed, aged decades in three days.

 

“Papa,” she whispered, but he didn’t look at her.

 

“Papa.” She didn’t know what else to say. But she couldn’t just say nothing. Maybe her father would find a new purpose to fight for his life if she continued speaking? Twelve was a far-too-young age to lose everyone!

 

“Papa.” Her voice warbled with tears now, but she couldn’t prevent it.

 

She didn’t want to.

 

“Don’t go.” The words escaped her lips at last, soft and fragile. She felt five, she felt fifty, all at once.

 

And their eyes met, at last.

 

His smile was just as fragile as her words had been, no longer sunny, and she could see no hope in his eyes, nothing of the fire that had made him secretly supplying things and information for the rebellion for years, or so she had suspected.

 

And then at last, for the first time since he had fallen to the wooden floor of their dining balcony with violent spasms three days ago, he spoke to her, in a voice weak and scratchy with disuse and pain.

 

“Leia, I… have something to tell you.”

 

Invisible, brutal hands squeezed at her heart.

 

“Tell what, Papa?” she croaked, falling to her knees at the bedside at last, staring into the dim, clouded brown eyes, so alike yet so different from her own, from only centimetres away.

 

The fragile smile was back. “Everything,” he whispered, and now there was a mixture between peace and pain in his half-focused gaze, one bizarre blending that she had never thought possible.

 

“You never kept a secret from me,” she insisted, baffled and distressed, even more than before. It wasn’t quite true in some respects, but she wasn’t about to let her father expend his breaths for story-telling!

 

The fragile smile turned bitter, as bitter as her tears had been yesterday night.

 

“Too many, Leia,” came the whisper, and now the peace in those familiar eyes was completely chased away by pain, pain and regrets from years long gone.

 

But before she could insist otherwise, he spoke again.

 

And her world collapsed all round her, just as something _clicked_ in her mind, and a strange current of energy, warm and cool and rushing and soaking, numbed every particle of her being.

 

She had been adopted through illegal means hours after she had been born, he told her. A friend of his had brought her to Alderaan in haste, in secrecy, and there had been another baby with her, a boy, her _twin_ brother. He had offered – no, _insisted_ – to adopt both of them, as her birth mother had been a dear friend also and he had felt that separating a pair of twins was wrong, but the friend had refused adamantly, and he had never found out where the friend and her brother had vanished to afterwards. The friend had used public transport, leaving the  *(1)Nubian starship he had arrived in stowed away in the palace’s hangar, and also the sad news that the twins’ mother had died shortly after childbirth.

 

He never told her who “the friend” was, though he did tell her who her mother was, Padmé Naberrie, and warned her not to share the name lightly with anyone, as he suspected that one of her many political rivals had murdered her, in spite of what the friend had said.

 

The necklace with a wooden carved pendant that he had given her at her twelfth birthday months ago, it was a keepsake left from her birth mother, he said, entrusted to him alongside her. It was her inheritance, aside from the very blood humming in her veins, the knack for politics, her features, her smile and the determination in her eyes, See-Threepio, Artoo-Deetoo, the Nubian ship, and her name alongside that of her brother’s – Leia and Luke.

 

But still, she didn’t even know who her father was. Her father – her _adoptive_ father – didn’t know either, he said.

 

Worse, she _knew_ that he was telling the truth, with nothing else hidden away, save the name of his baby-bringing, baby-separating friend.

 

And then, exhausted by the confession but in peace once more, with a last – entirely truthful and fervent – declaration of love to her, Bail Organa closed his eyes for the last time.

 

There was not even a brief mention – let alone a demand – that she be the queen of Alderaan, to bind the star system together as it had always been done, as her adoptive mother had done till her untimely death years ago.

 

Bail Organa, the only father that she knew, had freed her from _all_ entanglements for reasons he alone knew. It was a prospect far more fearsome than combing the galaxy in search of an unknown brother while being the child-queen to a star-system in the core of the said galaxy.

 

She feared it, because it uprooted her completely, made her meaningless in her own eyes, made her entire short life a huge lie.

 

But indeed, what – and _whom_ – did she have now?

 

Numb with the realisation and stifled by the unnamed fear, in body and mind, and buoyed and laden with the strange new sensation that had just been released in her no less, she fled, again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Footnote: *(1) “Naboo” feels and sounds too weird as the adjective, despite it featuring on canon. I would prefer “Nubian” to describe “of/from Naboo.”  
> Credits: A nod to Kungfu Jedi’s story, _The Pendant_ , for the reference of the japor snippet given to Leia on her twelfth birthday. The bit about Breha Organa passing away when Leia was three, and also that of “the friend” bringing the twins to Alderaan, were inspired by yet another story (or maybe two separate stories), but I’ve forgotten the title(s) and author(s). Please inform me if you are the author(s) or know about the aforementioned story(ies).  
> AU points: I’m going against the films here by having the droids in Leia’s possession and without the memory wipe, and that Leia never knew that she was adopted, and the sequence of events leading to Leia’s adoption. Bail was a little more sentimental here, and a little more cautious in that he didn’t let Leia be a figurehead in her childhood. I always suspect it’s her, not her adoptive father or mother, that persisted with stubborn determination to be a senator …  
> Arguments: Firstly, I know that Bail wasn’t supposed to regret his actions those years ago, feeling that Leia was safer not knowing that she was adopted, that she had a twin brother even. But in this, as his life was cut out so suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly, leaving her so young and orphaned and possibly threatened from a similar death (or worse), he changed his mind, especially since in this story Winter Retrac didn’t act as Leia’s adopted sister, just a very good friend. Secondly, if Padmé were truly dead by strangulation as Wookieepedia says, however in the Force could she manage to birth _twins_? I never deliver a baby thus far, but I know of the effort expended for such occasion, especially on the first delivery. If she was already choking on her breath, the contractions alone would already kill her. Or, alternately, she won’t survive a caesarean section either. She also wouldn’t be able to talk if she’s strangled, would she? So here I have my own version: the loss of will to live; and then somebody else compounded the problem…


	2. Duty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family, still a family, even if separated by time and space and death.

Mourners paid their respect to her father – no, her _adoptive_ father – _no_ , her _father_ – day and night. Leia received them with automatic, hollow grace, standing beside the open coffin where he was lain in state: just another statue, or maybe a living corpse. Her eyes were open wide, though half unseeing, and there was a small blank smile affixed to her lips.

 

She smiled like her birth mother, he had said in his long confession, wide and joyous and sincere and totally free.

 

The facsimile of _that_ smile never left, not until Winter guided her away from the Hall of Mourning, not until she had been bathed and coaxed into pyjamas and tucked into bed, like a girl a decade younger than she was.

 

And then, as they did every night after she had pretended to everyone that she was all right, the tears and desperation came crashing down in the privacy of her bedroom shortly after Winter was gone, witnessed only by her two droids.

 

She didn’t know how long she had been doing this. Time no longer mattered to her; nothing did. She did everything like a well-oiled machine now, worse than Threepio, her droid friend and personal caretaker, worse even than Artoo whose language was incomprehensible to most people.

 

She didn’t even talk, nowadays, aside from meaningless whispers of words that she was expected to say.

 

Her closest human caretakers were worried about her, she could _feel_ it. But they were even more worried about the future state of the world, left in her near-catatonic hands, she _knew_ it. There was just too much love and respect between them for those few powerful men and women to stage a coup, she thought.

 

But for now, she couldn’t care less about any of it.

 

The only _people_ who likewise didn’t care about Alderaan were Threepio and Artoo; no _Princess_ Leia for _them_ , just a twelve-year-old girl called Leia, now truly orphaned.

 

 _Droids_ , remnants from her _birth_ mother, protecting her, also remnant of the same woman.

 

They were a trio of misfits, together wherever she was needed, wherever she was wanted.

 

Nowadays, she never went anywhere because _she_ needed, because _she_ wanted. Life now consisted only of people’s expectations, of scrambling for a semblance of routine normalcy like a hand trying to grab at water.

 

Life was hollow, like she was.

 

And then, one night, Threepio and Artoo cornered her, just before she slipped under her blankets.

 

“Mistress Leia, is there perchance something that Artoo and I could do to help you?” Threepio began in his prim and proper way as per usual, though she could detect a cautious note in it.

 

“Nothing. Thanks, you two,” she mumbled, as always, ever since her world had figuratively vanished from under her feet, before her hand just as automatically reached out for the light button on her bedside table.

 

But Artoo was quicker.

 

Her blindly flailing hand met only his manipulator claw.

 

“Artoo,” she whined.

 

“Might we talk to you for a little while, then, Mistress Leia?” Threepio continued, sounding more cautious, more hesitant.

 

She gave up. She could rarely deny them their wishes, especially now that she knew they were once her mother’s.

 

_Her mother’s…_

 

She sat up straight on the edge of the bed, gasping, wide-eyed. Her heart thumped quicker, harder, carrying the current of energy that had shocked her into numbness days ago to all parts of her body. _Her mother!_ They could tell her about _her mother_ , if their memories had not been wiped.

 

And there was only one way to find out.

 

“Could you tell me about my mother, please?” Her voice was tremulous, and her face must have blanched, but she didn’t care. She needn’t pretend to these two droids, to her closest friends.

 

“I know little of Queen Breha, Mistress Leia,” Threepio answered quickly. Leia had to stifle a hysterical laughter on that. Queen Breha, of course. Neither Threepio nor Artoo had been informed that she had been adopted, had they? Just like the rest of Alderaan…

 

But there was still that cautious note in his voice… He wouldn’t be so hesitant if he were reciting facts, would he?

 

“Not Queen Breha, Threepio,” she murmured at last, meeting the droid’s luminous eyes dead on. “Padmé Naberrie. What can you and Artoo tell me about her? Or about my _real_ father, for that matter?”

 

She transferred her gaze to Artoo, timidly hopeful, just in time to witness the squat droid wobbled back and forth on his rollers, waving his manipulator claw centimetres above the floor, looking almost like an agitated or undecided human.

 

“Artoo.” Her eyes narrowed. The cloud of grief and confusion that had been gripping her thinned, chased away by suspicion, which led to a mounting anger.

 

“So the both of you knew?” She gripped her bedsheets, not wanting to explode now, not wanting to do something that she _might_ regret later.

 

“Erh… Mistress Leia, we… that is…” Threepio stuttered. Beside him but trying to edge away surreptitiously it seemed, Artoo crooned a long, low sound, as if coaxing or pleading.

 

Leia stood up. All of her muscles were taut with repressed fury, as her suspicions seemed to be confirmed, and for now her grief and confusion were truly set aside.

 

The two droids, one of whom was taller than her by almost half a metre and the other nearly as tall as she was, backed away hastily.

 

“M-Master Bail Organa, Mistress Leia,” Threepio whimpered, just as Artoo let out a binary shriek which could be interpreted as either warning or worry. “H-he has forbidden us to tell you, Mistress Leia. P-please don’t de-a-activate us, oh please.”

 

The answer frustrated her, stoking her fury further, impotent as it was. “Master Bail Organa is _dead_!” she snapped.

 

A split second afterwards, as her brain registered what she had just said, filtered past layers of anger, she recoiled both physically and inwardly.

 

The fury dissipated just as swiftly as it had come, as she crumpled on the carpeted floor beside her bed, sobbing into her hands.

 

Whoever Bail Organa was – had been – _no_ , _was_ – to her, whatever he had done to her in keeping her full identity away from her, he had been her father for twelve years, and died loving her, leaving her with no secret kept, nothing that pertained closely to her anyway.

 

And now he was gone forever, and she had just spat rudely at his memory, despite all that he had done _for_ her, even on his deathbed.

 

Cool metal fingers gingerly touched her shoulder. “Mistress Leia? Are you all right?”

 

A clearly-worried croon sounded nearby, just as the front of a just-as-familiar structure bumped gently against her back.

 

See-Threepio and Artoo-Deetoo.

 

Threepio had been frightened of _her_ , but now he tried to _comfort_ her, risking the dreaded presumed deactivation with how close he was to her now just to do so. Artoo hadn’t seemed to want to tell her anything either, but now…

 

A hollow laugh tore out of her lips, muffled by her hands, as her tears continued to drench her cheeks. “I am far from all right, Threepio. But thank you. Thank you for… for being my friends, even now.”

 

The metal fingers patted gently at her shoulder. A manipulator claw did the same to her back.

 

“Do not imitate me, Artoo-Deetoo,” she could hear Threepio scold his friend primly. “Use your own initiative, if you ever have one.”

 

A rude splat was the answer, but the manipulator claw did change its contact with her back, now caressing her nightgown-covered skin as tenderly as a metal construct not meant for such a deed could do so.

 

The tears fell harder, as her heart squeezed with overwhelming love for them: two droids – not even humans – who never left her, never failed to try to comfort her. Protocol droids and astromechs were never programmed for such a thing, she knew that; but whatever her birth mother or father had done to them so that they could do so, she was grateful for it.

 

_Her birth parents…_

 

“Tell me about my birth mother, please,” she requested tiredly, though her hands never left her face, and she didn’t move even a millimetre away from her spot on the rug. “And who is my birth father? You must have known about him; his name, at least, or even his face. Please, Threepio, Artoo, I _need_ to know. Papa is no longer here, and it’s him who told me that he isn’t my birth father anyway. Please, I _must_ know.”

 

Both metal limbs froze, before retracting slowly away from her. Her heart sank when a long moment passed in silence, with the two droids giving neither a verbal nor a gestural answer. They must have been programmed not to answer. Someone must have put a password on their memory banks so that they could tell nobody about the two subjects she wanted to know the most.

 

But at last, just as she was giving up her quest, at least for tonight, Threepio spoke up, sounding just as near as before, but firmer, fact-citing, pre-programmed. “Master Anakin stored many things in me and Artoo so that he could show them to his *(1)child later. We can show you something of his and Mistress Padmé on your holoprojector if you would like, Mistress Leia, as you are his child, and we have been passworded for such occasion. There could be many more things of theirs on Mistress Padmé’s ship, but I would suggest that we visit it tomorrow instead of tonight, Mistress Leia, the guards would not be pleased with me if–”

 

But Leia had already sprung to her feet and scrambled unsteadily towards the large holoprojector set on the wall opposite her bed, ignoring Threepio’s familiar prattle, soon joined with Artoo’s beeping. Her heart swelled with excitement and trepidation. _At last!_ But was she ready for this?

 

Her finger wavered on the power button of the holoprojector. But then the droids sidled up to her, and it was too late to back down.

 

And in the end, she was glad that she hadn’t backed down.

 

The large screen went alive when Artoo had plugged himself into its socket. A brown-haired, brown-eyed woman in casual summer clothes, perched elegantly on the side-edge of a quickly-approaching small boat, smiled playfully at a blond-haired, blue-eyed man in dark-brown robes smirking boyishly back at her from his awkward post on the opposite side.

 

“Mistress Padmé and Master Anakin, Mistress Leia,” Threepio informed her solemnly, though, uncharacteristically, didn’t elaborate further, as though he were aware that her focus was entirely on the screen, and no word was enough to describe his previous two owners.

 

And she did drink in the scene, greedily.

 

When she at last indicated, reluctantly, for the screen to be changed, Artoo showed the man tinkering with what looked like the cockpit of a starcraft with an easy grace, occasionally smiling at the woman standing behind him and watching his progress curiously.

 

“Padmé Naberrie, and Anakin Skywalker, my ‘Master Ani’,” he twittered, adding helpfully, “when he at last got her permission to tinker with her personal starship,” before Threepio could say anything.

 

Her birth mother and birth father, they said at last, a Nubian and a Tatooinian, rarely together but rarely apart when together, wherever they happened to be at that time.

 

“Artoo said these images might help you find your parents, since now neither Master Bail nor Mistress Breha are here anymore. He misses Master Ani, he said,” Threepio supplied afterwards, giving her an insight to the two droids’ previous debate just before they had shown her the images. “I miss Mistress Padmé and Master Ani too, Mistress Leia. However, I cannot say how mere images could help, really.” Then, as in other times, he degenerated to chiding his booing squat friend. “Oh, stop your smug chattering, you overweight glob of grease. You don’t help Mistress Leia at all with that attitude.”

 

Her laughter now, although still weak and croaky, was far more genuine than before.

 

“We shall,” she promised simply. But indeed, what could she offer otherwise? And the three of them needed no elaborate words to express the same desire, anyhow.

 

The two droids stood at either side of the bed as she climbed under her blankets for real now, like they had done ever since her earliest memory. But now her perception of them was changed, just as her world had been these few days.

 

They were there, in lieu of her parents. And as paltry as the substitution was, she was grateful for it, for them. They were droids, but they were _her parents’_ , and _hers_ , and _her brother’s_ , _only_ theirs.

 

And now, she had a purpose once more.

 

After all, she and her brother had never been together, but they would not be kept apart again once she found him, just like their parents had been. And then Padmé Naberrie and Anakin Skywalker wouldn’t have to be separated too, and the four of them would be a family at last.

 

But Bail Organa, the only father that she had known for twelve years, had never been unkind to her. She was never one to shirk her duties as well, and this time it was literally the size of a planet, and then some. She would do the duties that the people asked of her to some extent, and she would never leave them alone, as she knew how abandonment felt like, all too keenly.

 

She just had more visceral duties elsewhere for now.

 

Her birth parents would understand the need to return to lead Alderaan, then, she was sure, especially her mother, as she remembered her mother’s face from her lessons about the Republican Senate, tagged to the name “Senator Amidala.” She would simply have to fit her brother in a position somewhere after they were reunited, or maybe they could go back and forth between worlds, experiencing the galaxy in full while learning and growing up and being a family…

 

She fell asleep with a real smile, the first in a few days, as if a toddler lulled into sweet dreams by bizarre-but-happy stories told by her parents.

 

Leia Organa fell into a deep, contented slumber in her own bed in her own rooms in the palace in Aldera for the last time. As the sun rose the next morning, Leia Skywalker rose with it, ready to go hunting for three severed ties, armed only with three names and a tenacious determination.

 

After all, it was her duty too, but now _only_ to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Footnote: *(1) Anakin hadn’t known that Padmé had been carrying twins, after all, so he had prepared for only one.  
> Credit: Thank you, PandaApprovedxx, for informing me about several spelling mistakes in this chapter on its first draft! Highly appreciated, and the mistakes were already corrected in the second one, before this third version.  
> AU point: Just a reminder: Threepio and Artoo here have always been Leia’s. And in this story, Leia, for lack of a pseudo sibling or a real one, and having just one best friend, got quite close to Threepio and Artoo. In my mind, Leia is much more like Anakin in personality, and Anakin had only a handful of close friends, one of whom was his wife.  
> Author’s note: Before you point your blaster cannons at me: No, the end of this chapter isn’t what you might think it is, if judging from the hint alone.


	3. Unplanned, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some panic, some underestimation, some perfectly-legitimate kidnapping of the Royal Heir Apparent...

Seeing the closed coffin bearing Bail Organa’s body being covered slowly but steadily by humble earth drove home the horrible, undeniable fact that he was _dead_ and Leia was _alone_. Witnessing the funeral procession till the end was meant to give her closure, but what a painful chill it was to see first her adoptive father’s body disappear under the lid of the coffin, then to see the said coffin covered forever by dirt! And worse…

 

“Winter, please…”

 

…She could not even act on her plan to visit her birth mother’s starship afterwards, to ease the terrible, cold, hollow feeling in her chest, to remind her tangibly that her birth family members were just separated from her, not lost forever like her adopted ones. Neither the pleas nor the pleading looks worked against a determined Winter Retrac, unfortunately. And indeed, the older girl kept firm with her opinion that Leia’s safety would be compromised from overexposure to even the palace hangars in such a fragile situation, in addition to the improperness of a future head of state visiting the hangars for a perceived pleasure after burying the late head of state.

 

Even worse, now Winter insisted on camping in her quarters, claiming that Leia ought not to be alone in such a delicate and uncertain time, and Captain Antilles – head of the Royal Household Security – agreed with her.

 

Not that Leia didn’t appreciate the gesture… but those particular rooms had belonged _only_ to her and her two droids, ever since her earliest memory with the Organas, and neither of her adoptive parents had sought to change it in their lifetimes. It wasn’t about to change now, then, Leia decided, not even for such a close friend, especially since it was the only remaining personal touch to her life that her adoptive parents had left her. So she relocated to a set of smaller, simpler living quarters in the less-used parts of the guest wing, consisting of only two bedrooms, a bathroom and a sitting room, claiming to Winter and the palace staff with all the guiles that she could muster that anonymity was best for her security right now.

 

 _Thankfully_ , they believed her, agreed with her whole-heartedly.

 

Now, if only they would leave her alone for just _one_ hour!

 

“Artoo, do you think you can create a distraction for me? Just enough for me to run to Mother’s ship?” the frustrated, nearly-in-tears twelve-year-old begged at the squat droid one night in the privacy of her new bedroom, just after her latest bid for the hangars, via the window and the leafy tree outside of it, had been thwarted by a discreet-but-all-too-loyal palace guard hidden among the flowery bushes under the said tree. Then, on second thought, she amended, “But you’re an astromech… You can get me to the ship faster than if I do it alone, right? So can you do it instead, Threepio?”

 

It had been two days after she had laid her adoptive father to rest beside the tomb of her adoptive mother, and she didn’t wish to wait _any longer_ for what was _her right_.

 

The addressed golden-plated droid, shifting from foot to foot, begged right back, “But Mistress Leia, Captain Antilles is going to scrap me once he realises you are not there and I was meant to distract him. Besides, I am a protocol droid, not a battle droid, Mistress Leia. Oh please, don’t send me out to face the blasters alone!”

 

A rude, mocking string of splats and tweets spewed forth from Artoo, to which his counterpart chid indignantly, complete with crossed arms, “You try that yourself, _Ar-Too-Dee-Too_ , see if I will save you then. I assure you, I will not! And then you will not be of use to Mistress Leia anymore. See what Master Ani or Mistress Padmé will think of you then, if we ever see them again!”

 

And with that, as per usual, the two droids fell back into their old routine of verbal sparring.

 

A tired, bitter smile twitched on Leia’s lips on watching their antics, then she buried her face in her hands and groaned. The names of her birth parents just spiked up her longing for the starship, for access to what had been denied to her for twelve years. The feelings had transformed into a deep ache in her bones by now, seeping into somewhere in her chest and constricting it, and she could do _nothing_ about it. Not the words, not the tree-creeping, not even the latest appeal to her two droids’ sense of adventure had made a difference. All she got for tonight’s efforts were only a mounting frustration, a rumpled nightgown, and tiny leaves and twigs stuck in her thick wavy hair.

 

In such a mood, it was not surprising that she did not answer the hesitant knocking on the door, although her droid companions instantly fell silent mid-argument.

 

One blue eye and a patch of white hair peeked in when two more series of knocks were not answered. Leia glared at them.

 

Winter, however, quite accustomed to Leia’s moods, didn’t react to it. Half of the face soon became an apologetic whole, then the owner came in, closing the door behind her.

 

“Why do you want to go to the hangars so much, Leia?” No apologies for the bother she knew and indeed intended to make, no mincing her way into the matter even though she must know that it could trigger Leia’s brittle temper. For one with such a lady-like bearing, Winter could be quite blunt and business-like. It was why she had managed to be Leia’s friend for so long while other, much more unbendingly genteel girls had failed miserably, and it was why she was safe from bearing the brunt of Leia’s mood at the meantime.

 

Still, Leia wasn’t about to disclose her family secrets to her, maybe not yet. She wasn’t sure if her adoptive parents had ever told anybody about the adoption, or if anybody else had known about it from direct participation, or even if the adoption had been done legally. She would risk it becoming general knowledge should she fish for information now, and somehow she got the feeling that such a disclosure would be bad indeed for her continued safety. Distraction, then…

 

“Did the team uncover yet who poisoned my father?”

 

Somehow, it felt wrong now, to call Bail Organa her father, but it was just a mild discomfort, dwarfed by the gaping hole left by his sudden, violent departure.

 

Winter must be able to clearly see the distraction for what it was, since her eyebrows rose up nearly to her fringes. Still, the older girl did oblige her, to Leia’s relief and gratitude.

 

“They’re trying their best, you know that. The leads are still too few to narrow down the list of suspects.” A drawn-out sigh: exhausted, worried, frustrated. “I’m tempted to just squirrel you away to Delaya or even some unheard-of planet in the Rim until this case is concluded satisfactorily. We have to make sure that it won’t happen again.”

 

The girls mirrored each other in bearing, though not in height and colouring: sitting side-by-side on the edge of the bed, with eyes downcast and hunched shoulders. But inside, a plan began to form in Leia’s mind, sparked by Winter’s rambling. How upset would Winter be, if she knew that her fretful speculations created what she usually called a “mad idea unbefitting a princess”…

 

But how glorious it would be, to sit in the cockpit of her mother’s ship, to steer her birthright legacy in space wherever she wanted to go… She’d install the Royal Council and Winter as her representatives first, maybe in a few months, after this horrible case had been solved. Afterwards she’d go on a mission to collect her brother and parents, then they’d explore the galaxy together for a while. No royal protocols to dictate her life, at least for some time…

 

“Leia?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Did you listen to what I said? Any of it?”

 

“Uh?”

 

Winter let out a put-upon sigh, sounding disturbingly like Threepio, who was now semi-hidden in a far corner together with Artoo.

 

“Sorry,” Leia offered. “What did you say?” Better deflect Winter’s attention further, better the older girl didn’t know what was in the hangars that was so special to her, and maybe…

 

“I said–“

 

But whatever Winter was about to repeat, exasperatedly but fondly, it was drowned when somebody jerked open the front door, ran to the direction of the bedroom they were occupying at the moment, then gave three sharp, rapid knocks to the closed door before jerking it open.

 

In a flash, the two droids stood in the middle of the room, Winter pushed Leia under the bed, and she herself straightened up to face the intruder.

 

“Where is Princess Leia, Winter?” It was Captain Antilles, but worried, almost panicked, far from his usual composed self.

 

Leia bit at her lip. A frisson of apprehension ran up and down her spine, quickly turning into anxiety. What had happened in the intervening time since his last report before dinner? If even the unruffled captain could turn _this_ visibly afraid…

 

She frowned. The urge to burrow deeper under the bed battled with the pull of morbid curiosity and the thirst for information.

 

The latter won, in the end.

 

Thankfully, Winter’s stoic, “Somewhere, Captain,” masked the slight rustling of her night-gown while she inched closer to the edge of the bed-frame to hear better.

 

But then she froze, as the captain continued hurriedly, almost _desperately_ , “I must speak to her, Winter. This is urgent. Vader is going to be here in an hour, and he seemed far angrier than usual. He wants _Leia_ , Winter, for whatever nefarious reason. I already tried to tell him that she is currently not in a good state to meet with him, that she is in mourning, but he insisted. We must hide her until he’s gone. You can pretend to be the Princess for a while, can’t you? Traffic out of the planet will be watched, but we can put Leia in one of the more rarely used hangars that she’s been wanting to visit these couple of days. He’ll be using the main landing platform, so it’s far away. It’ll be safe enough.”

 

Tension bled away from her, and a thoughtful frown replaced it.

 

Vader, _just_ Lord Vader, though an angry Lord Vader somehow. No invading mercenaries from off world, no threat of riots or coup d’état, just an unscheduled visit from the Emperor’s second-in-command. Captain Antilles just broke down because of all the stress then, truly.

 

But…

 

“But _why_?” Winter cried out, baffled and distressed. “This doesn’t make sense! The Empire never paid this much attention on Alderaan. We’ve got  *(1) _nothing_ to hide from them! And if they just wanted to pay their respects, why didn’t he come sooner, while the Prince was lying in state?”

 

… _Why_ did Winter have to follow his lead into semi-hysteria? She should know better! She wasn’t as hard-pressed as Captain Antilles in this chaotic time, after all, given how she rarely left Leia’s side, and how Leia in turn was kept out of the immediate loop of the investigation. Vader was a force to be reckoned with, but he wasn’t a mindless slaughterer, especially when there was neither cause nor reason for it, she was sure. Those tales were just exaggerated to scare people… right?

 

Peeking an eye out from in-between the hangings down the bedside, Leia now felt more curious, bemused and vexed than anything else. Why such an interest from the Emperor’s right-hand man, indeed? Why her, _specifically_? What did he want with _her_? Lord Thevn of House Alde, her adoptive father’s elder cousin and the head of House Alde, was the acting First Chairman, after all. A personage of his station and experience ought to have been sufficient for a state meeting with Lord Vader, right?

 

But _Lord_ Vader wasn’t just a lord, was he…?

 

Did the Empire wish to impose _military_ rule on Alderaan, then, given how Lord Vader was _the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces_? It was a chilling prospect indeed. But for what purpose? Although Leia herself had sniffed some rebelling tendencies on the palace’s staff, and even on her own adoptive father, they were not rebels and thus not a threat to the Empire.

 

She was confused.

 

She needed _answers_. Why and in what capacity did Lord Vader visit Alderaan?

 

Cowering in a deserted corner like Captain Antilles and Winter expected her to wouldn’t get her the answers though.

 

So she crawled out from under the bed …

 

 … And in one swooping motion, the cold wooden floor was replaced by Captain Antilles’ arms, before the man, with his precious burden of squirming, yelling charge, just as suddenly sprinted out of the bedroom, then out of her quarters, then out of the guest wing, then through various hallways to wherever Leia didn’t know.

 

Her only comfort was that her faithful companions, See-Threepio and Artoo-Deetoo, came streaking right after him, yelling – beeping, in Artoo’s case – just as frantically. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Footnote: *(1) In this story, Winter, slated more as a companion, handmaiden and decoy for all purposes than a rebel operative, knew almost just as little as Leia about the rebellious tendencies of their compatriots.  
> Author’s Notes: If you’re wondering why Vader was so angry and hunted especially for Leia, remember Chapter 1 and Leia’s response to Bail’s revelation. Nine days were quite a long time for an _in_ famously-impatient Sith Lord to wait to hunt down a Force-Sensitive child…


End file.
